Both the Australia Council’s and South Australia’s new five-year arts plans talk the talk, but fail to provide vital arts funding and structural support for a diverse arts culture.
Labor’s arts election policy includes more funding for the Australia Council and the ABC. But while this is welcome, arts and culture deserve far greater attention.
The Coalition government’s approach to arts and culture policy has been one of ad hocism and neglect. Perhaps most serious has been the damage done to the Australia Council and the ABC.
At a time when even accountants are looking for a more compelling understanding of value, it is imperative that the arts – where individual experience is central – resist the evangelical call of quantification.
Australian operas have been written about many pressing topics - from the Stolen Generations to the Lindy Chamberlain case - but few have been staged a second time. What is going wrong?
Philanthropists are creating new galleries to share their private collections with the Australian public. But these gifts do not ameliorate the deficit left by declining government arts fundings.
Many Australian artists have seized on the chance to crowdfund their work through agents such as Patreon and Kickstarter. But crowdfunding should not be a substitute for government support for the arts.
The average Australian female artist is better educated than her male counterpart but earns significantly less than him, new research shows. And artists’ incomes are declining in real terms.
It is a strange reality but opera as an artform is always given special and arguably preferential treatment by governments and other influential forces in Western society. This happens, it seems, regardless…
The plan is there is no plan. On climate change, immigration, energy, marriage equality – pick an area – the federal government displays policy desuetude and political exhaustion. Around the world, the…
New survey from the Australia Council shows pretty much all Australians engage with the arts, and 8-in-10 do so online. However more people are ambivalent about public arts funding, and more people think the arts are too expensive.
It’s a strange thing when the re-entry of genuine choice into political contests is framed as “anti-politics”. It feels more historically accurate, and logical, to see it the opposite way. For the past…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne